The Press Wednesday, July 10, 1929. Dominion Status.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19667, 10 July 1929, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, July 10, 1929. Dominion Status.

If, as is reported in this morning's cable news, the Dominions are to be represented by their own delegates at the forthcoming international conference on the Rhineland question, the problem of Dominion status is likely to come up for discussion again. The Dominions have already been directly represented at several international gatherings, and this, combined with the changes effected after the 1926 Imperial Conference, has led people who do not appreciate the niceties of constitutional law (and of juristic phrases) to assume that the Dominions have acquired an international status. They have and they have not. It is foolish to suppose, as some constitutional lawyers would have us do, that the signing of the League Covenant by representatives of the Dominions marks no alteration in the status of the Dominions, since there have been many political developments which could not be explained (or justified) in terms of law. But it is rash to assume —as many colonial statesmen have assumed —that Great Britain and the Dominions were separate contracting parties to the Covenant. The British Government has always dissented from this view, though in deference to the susceptibilities of the inhabitants of the Dominions its expressions of dissent have been guarded. | The preamble to the Treaty of Ver- | sailles, of which the League Covenant is a part, distinctly states that the Treaty was signed by the British Empire as one principal, represented by several agents. " From the point of " view of international law," says M. Rolin, an eminent French jurist, " the "British Empire therein appeared as "one person, not as a plurality of " persons." It may, of course, be pointed out that the Dominions' representatives have an independent voice in the League Assembly, and —what is more—that they are eligible for the non-permanent seats on the League Council. The answer to this, according to Professor J. H. Morgan, a wellknown English authority on constitui tional law, is that the Assembly is " only a debating society" and that the Council's decisions have to be unanimous. And it must further be remembered that the Dominions obtained their present status on the League as the" result of claims made on their behalf by the British Government. It is hardly necessary, of course, to point out that there is nothing in the Balfour Report to suggest that the Dominions have an international status; they are simply " autonomous com- " munities within the British Empire." The Dominions do possess " sovereignty," but it is not the sovereignty of an international State. It is, on the other hand, something more than the sovereignty possessed by, say, one of the American States. Fortunately the fact that the emergence of the British Empire has not been duly provided for in international law need not worry us.